Neutrinos are tiny and everywhere. The neutrino family makes up three of the dozen fundamental particles of matter in the Standard Model. They’re made in nuclear reactions.
Locally that’s the Sun. The solar neutrino flux is about 65 billion neutrinos, passing through just one square centimeter of area on earth, every second.
(So look at your hand. Imagine you can see them.)
Neutrinos barely interact with matter. A neutrino could pass through 3000 light years of human meat before hitting anything. (Now imagine that).
So they’re hard to detect.
Neutrinos didn’t have mass and then they did.
Back in my physics undergrad I remember sitting in a lecture hall and being told to update our photocopied handouts because neutrino mass had been discovered over the summer.
(That link above is to Physics World, July 1998).
An experience like that absolutely changes your view about what science is.
The excitement in the room!
To edit printed notes by hand like that – you internalise this picture of science as a living breathing edifice, not distant and immutable. The idea that physics is a giant wikipedia becomes normal in your head.
Three other similar formative moments also from my undergrad, all previously discussed:
That time I learnt that my tutor’s scepticism about cold fusion was because he’d just grabbed the required kit for the Fleischmann-Pons “discovery” and tried it himself, and I realised that getting involved yourself is a totally possible thing to do (and even if you don’t or can’t, the possibility of replication is what keeps everyone honest).
That time I saw (we saw!) a blue LED for the first time, that pure blue essentially a new colour, fresh from its discovery in Japan, and viscerally grokked that science was a continuously changing thing – and that we were part of it.
That time we spent two days in lab laddering up abstraction layers from semiconductors to transistors to gates to shift registers to the separation of data and code to microcontrollers, at each stage first figuring it out with our hands, testing it, and then replacing our jury-rigged kit with standard components, until eventually we ran a small program on a computer and could see in my minds eye the whole edifice beneath, and experienced the vertigo, and I understood just a little bit for myself about how our world had been painstakingly constructed.
Often when I read people talking about science, I feel like they’re talking about something which isn’t this. I don’t recognise that unapproachable unitary authority, that something other. By luck and privilege and a bit of choice, my personal picture of science isn’t that. It’s malleable, contested, read-write not read-only.
One of my toddler’s first experience of capital-A Art was drawing on the floor.
In the summer of 2021, the giant central space of Tate Modern, the Turbine Hall, was taken over by Mega Please Draw Freely by Ei Arakawa. The entire floor became a whiteboard; kids who entered were given bold wax crayons.
By the time we went the floor was a colossal tapestry of 10,000 colourful drawings – by kids, so nothing felt out of reach or like it couldn’t be replicated. We went back a few times, taking an hour or so to draw and to look.
So, for her, a gallery isn’t a place you go and see. Her template is that it’s a place you go and see and simultaneously a place you leave your mark for others to see.
What a way for art to imprint on my little girl!
Gaudi’s cathedral has been under construction since 1882. So residents of Barcelona can see it grow and embellish in front of their eyes. If you want you can dedicate your life to it too: I highly recommend this short movie about the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo.
Imagine what it does to your view of infrastructure, seemingly set in stone, and institutions - even one as eternal as the church - if they grow in front of our eyes and because of OUR HANDS.
Maybe we’ve lost something by not having a grassroots cathedral project in every city.
I wonder what the absolute smallest most certain way would be to give this read-write formative experience to everyone, for science, for infrastructure, for institutions and all the rest.
What triggered this anecdote was Tom Carden on Twitter who said this:
Every popular science book should come with a registration card so you can be part of the mass recall when science advances.
…and maybe that’s it?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here’s the link. Thanks, —Matt.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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Neutrinos are tiny and everywhere. The neutrino family makes up three of the dozen fundamental particles of matter in the Standard Model. They’re made in nuclear reactions.
Locally that’s the Sun. The solar neutrino flux is
(So look at your hand. Imagine you can see them.)
Neutrinos barely interact with matter. A neutrino could pass through 3000 light years of human meat before hitting anything. (Now imagine that).
So they’re hard to detect.
Neutrinos didn’t have mass and then they did.
Back in my physics undergrad I remember sitting in a lecture hall and being told to update our photocopied handouts because neutrino mass had been discovered over the summer.
(That link above is to Physics World, July 1998).
An experience like that absolutely changes your view about what science is.
The excitement in the room!
To edit printed notes by hand like that – you internalise this picture of science as a living breathing edifice, not distant and immutable. The idea that physics is a giant wikipedia becomes normal in your head.
Three other similar formative moments also from my undergrad, all previously discussed:
Often when I read people talking about science, I feel like they’re talking about something which isn’t this. I don’t recognise that unapproachable unitary authority, that something other. By luck and privilege and a bit of choice, my personal picture of science isn’t that. It’s malleable, contested, read-write not read-only.
One of my toddler’s first experience of capital-A Art was drawing on the floor.
In the summer of 2021, the giant central space of Tate Modern, the Turbine Hall, was taken over by Mega Please Draw Freely by Ei Arakawa. The entire floor became a whiteboard; kids who entered were given bold wax crayons.
By the time we went the floor was a colossal tapestry of 10,000 colourful drawings – by kids, so nothing felt out of reach or like it couldn’t be replicated. We went back a few times, taking an hour or so to draw and to look.
So, for her, a gallery isn’t a place you go and see. Her template is that it’s a place you go and see and simultaneously a place you leave your mark for others to see.
What a way for art to imprint on my little girl!
Gaudi’s cathedral has been under construction since 1882. So residents of Barcelona can see it grow and embellish in front of their eyes. If you want you can dedicate your life to it too: I highly recommend this short movie about the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo.
Imagine what it does to your view of infrastructure, seemingly set in stone, and institutions - even one as eternal as the church - if they grow in front of our eyes and because of OUR HANDS.
Maybe we’ve lost something by not having a grassroots cathedral project in every city.
I wonder what the absolute smallest most certain way would be to give this read-write formative experience to everyone, for science, for infrastructure, for institutions and all the rest.
What triggered this anecdote was Tom Carden on Twitter who said this:
…and maybe that’s it?